The Place for Unhappiness: Interview with Bulgarian poet, Peycho Kanev

I play with the words whenthere is nothing better to doand I look at my catand she looks at me-we know the secret lockedwithin the time

she plays with her hair in front ofthe mirrorand I just staremute and aroused,I just starewithout words in my mindwithout pain in my life

she plays with her red hairand sets the whole room onfireand I just stareand outside the night grins at mewith absolute delight.

~ Peycho Kanev

INTERVIEW WITH PEYCHO KANEV

Sofia, Bulgaria~

Salvatore Ala: One of the remarkable qualities in your poetry is that events in time and place become part of the substance of the poem. The past is now and the now is now. The voice is living. It is at once manifold and manifest. How did you come to this kind of poetic voice?

And little by little I started to write about all these wonderful concepts: the beginning and the end of time, “the edge of the Universe,” my understanding of the universe ~ why it is as it is and why it exists at all. And I think that poetry itself is a derivative of these theories, of these great paradigms. Poetry as a black hole, if you wish, that sucks in everything else. Not to destroy it, but to turn it into something more wonderful, more meaningful.

Salvatore Ala: In most of your poems you are performing an activity of one kind or another and this draws us in, in a very familiar and human way. Can you talk a bit about this?

Peycho Kanev: Most of my poems are born in my head as I walk. That’s why you feel this rhythm inside them, that’s the walking part; you find your pace, you feel it, then your heartbeat, and then you see something, or feel something, or remember something. And all this happens while walking. That is why I love the cities. You can walk endlessly on the streets and you can see fresh sights everyday, something always happens. I can’t write poems when I walk through, let’s say, some mountain, or a corn field. It is always the city and always as I walk. Then you feel alive, more than alive, you feel that you are a part of something. That is why I do not like very much Henry David Thoreau and his living in the woods. In that sense I am more of a Whitman guy, the city boy.

Salvatore Ala: There’s also a unique existential perspective in your poetry, an edge, a sadness. I think it is what Czeslaw Milosz called, “being on the other side of the fire.” How much of this is you and how much of it is perhaps part of the European tradition? Or living in America?

Peycho Kanev: I think this comes from the place I was born, the Balkans and Bulgaria, my country.

Shipka Church, Bulgaria. Photo: Georgi Tcvetkov

We are full of rich history, but almost all of it is full of darkness, blood and suffering.

We were under Ottoman rule for 500 years. That is five centuries of pain, killings, and torture. Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as we gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. That is when we took our first breath of fresh air.

When you talk about European tradition, I feel and I know that I am not part of it. I am part of the Balkan tradition. All of these dark memories are part of me, they are inside my blood, inside my mind. They dwell inside me. And, of course, they become part of my poetry, too. For good, I hope.

Like the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said: “There is strong shadow where there is much light.” And we, the people from the Balkans, the Bulgarians especially, are full with the strongest shadows.

Asenova Krepos

Salvatore Ala: Writing about the Bulgarian poet, Dimcho Debelaynov, Martin Seymour-Smith pointed out that there is a “peculiarly Bulgarian unhappiness.” Would you agree? And what is Bulgarian unhappiness to you?

blinded by the sun

so here we are againgoing home after 12 hours ofthis guillotine-jobwe walk slowly toward the bus stopand then in the old bus we are silentas martyrsas stray dogsand all of us are dreaming about butcherknifesand heavens

when we get homewe know that maybe we don’t have foodbut in the fridgethere are always some bottles to keep uswarm and dreaming for better timesfor better daysand when it’s 12 we fight with our womenbut we do it quietly and soft

when the sun hit our faces in the morningwe go to work with smilebecause we know that when we came backthere will be one bottleto keep us sane for the next dayjust for thenext day.

~ Peycho Kanev

Peycho Kanev: Yes, there is something like that. Debelyanov is one of the best Bulgarian poets, one of our strong voices, but sometimes he gets too lyrical for me, to sugary. But make no mistakes, he too, felt what suffering is. He died when he was only twenty-nine years old, killed by Irish troops during the First World War. But for me there is one Bulgarian poet that stood above all of the others. Believe me when I say that he is one of the best in the world in the last few centuries. His name is Nikola Vaptsarov.

Varna Vaptsarov during his time in the Varna Naval Machinery School

Despite the fact that he ever published only one poetry book, he is considered one of the greatest Bulgarian poets. Vaptsarov was arrested in 1942 and subjected to inhuman torture and finally executed on 23rd July, 1942 by the fascists regime in Bulgaria. He continued to write until the very end, and indeed his last verse addressed to his wife is one of the most moving and inspiring. He wrote that two hours before he was shot.

The fight is hard and pitiless The fight is epic, as they say. I fell. Another takes my place – Why single out a name?

After the firing squad – the worms. Thus does the simple logic go. But in the storm we’ll be with you, My people, for we loved you so.

He was 32 years old and he is the best example of a true Bulgarian voice.

Salvatore Ala: In North America, unhappiness is treated with immediate medical attention. Don’t we need unhappiness? Isn’t unhappiness the only space left in which we can reflect on life honestly? If we can’t accept unhappiness, don’t we numb our ability to experience poetry?

Feuille sur souche | Daniel Heikalo | Montreal, Quebec | 2012

Peycho Kanev: I still do not understand Americans. “Oh, I am so depressed!” Depressed about what? You have it easy. You have wonderful life! Trust me, I know what I am talking about. There is nothing to be depressed about. Go just for a week to some country from the Third world, some country in Africa, to see what depression is! Or, like you love to say, come to walk a mile in my shoes! And you even have shrinks for your cats and dogs! That is the real madness. I do not understand it and I do not want to. And I answer with “Yes” to last part of your question. I really believe that. But you don’t have to accept it. It is part of your life. Live with it.

The great art, poetry, music, all of that, has been created to compensate for the suffering of mankind.

Plante séchée | Daniel Heikalo| Montreal, Quebec

Meat

I still remember the eaglesperched on the rocksand, after that, leaping from the infinityinto the abyss to look for meat.

So majestically!The smooth feathers and the shining talons,pulsing against the Sun.

I still remember those eaglesfrom my dream.So real!Was I 5 or 8?But I still haven’t forgotten those creatures.

They were perching on my handsand pecking at the pieces of meatand, after that, they flew towards the empyrean,but their feathered soulsstayed with me,

even now…

One of them sits on my left shoulder,like some obscure critic,frowning at these linesand pecking atth w rds th t I m writ ng.

~ Peycho Kanev

Salvatore Ala: In another interview you make an amazing comment about poetic maturity. You say, “… as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.” I was wondering if you could expand on this. What can the soul accomplish? How does the pen accomplish more?

Peycho Kanev: It is really simple. The way I see it, the work or the creation of some poet, painter, musician, sculptor, etc., is far more important than the creator. It will last longer, it’s more honest, truer. Take Homer, for example, Dante,Michelangelo. We still bow before their creations.

Salvatore Ala: I’ve also noticed that quite a few dogs appear in your poems, unusual since Baudelaire and so many others have made cats the queens of poetry. What do the dogs represent for you?

Peycho Kanev: I just love to put animals in my poems. When I write about dogs, I think of something dark, like Hades for example, and Cerberus.

Cerberus, or Kerberos, in Greek and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed dog, or “hellhound” which guards the gates of the Underworld, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping.

Peycho Kanev: Not that dogs are bad creatures for me, but I like to imagine them like this. And as for the cats, well that is something else. Cats are mythical beings, astonishing, time lives in their paws, they are halfway here, and halfway somewhere else. The ancient Egyptians and Romans knew that, their big secret, but we are still trying to comprehend it.

Salvatore Ala: A final question a friend used to ask me: Are you a poet because you are you, or are you you because you are a poet?

Peycho Kanev: I am A Poet Because I Am!

Further Notes

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks. His collection Bone Silence was released in 2010 by Desperanto, NY and Уиски в тенекиена кутия, Janet-45 Print and Publishing, 2013, Американски тетрадки, Ciela Soft and Publishing, 2010, Разходка през стените, Ciela Soft and Publishing, 2009 were published in Bulgaria.

Peycho Kanev has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. Translations of his books will be published soon in Italy, Poland and Russia.

His poems have appeared in more than 900 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Hawaii Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, JMWW, The Coachella Review, Mascara Literary Review, The Mayo Review, Two Thirds North, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

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~Andrew Nargolwala, psychotherapist

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